


I Don't Know What I Want, but Regardless...

by A_Big_Old_Skeleton



Category: Daria (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22484308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Big_Old_Skeleton/pseuds/A_Big_Old_Skeleton
Summary: While toiling away at her dead-end job, Daria comes to a sudden realization and handles it with less than perfect aplomb. Jane helps, as best she can.Shenanigans, as they are wont to do, ensue.
Relationships: Jane Lane/Daria Morgendorffer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	I Don't Know What I Want, but Regardless...

Daria woke up slowly. This was nothing new - Daria never woke up particularly _fast_ \- but there was an extra reluctance to the act this morning which felt significant, somehow. Perhaps it was the pounding headache, which the sunlight filtering in through the window did nothing to help, or perhaps it was the knot at the base of her spine that told her she’d most likely passed out (well, the knot at the base of her spine and the taste of vomit in her mouth). Daria had never been one for drinking heavily, though events would, occasionally, conspire to drive her directly into the muddled embrace of some kind of liquor or other.

So, a hangover then. Her thoughts began to sluggishly assemble into something like order, providing important information such as:

  1. You drank quite a lot last night
  2. This is not your usual bed
  3. This is not your apartment
  4. You smell like cigarettes
  5. You are wearing last night’s clothes
  6. You are a mess



Daria groaned and sat up, rubbing her forehead in a useless bid to soothe her headache, and began to process the rest of her surroundings. The walls were bare brick, hardwood floor, a cramped kitchenette in the corner and a futon upon which she’d been sleeping. There was a bottle of water set on a small table next to her, along with her glasses (neatly folded and set out of potential range of a flailing limb), a bottle of aspirin, and a scrawled note that she’d need to put her glasses on to have any hope of reading.

Memories of the previous night’s events began to politely knock on the door of her consciousness, but Daria instinctively felt she wasn’t quite up to the task of sorting through them at the moment and elected to focus instead on the seemingly monumental task of combining the water, aspirin, and her glasses to achieve a better view of her surroundings and maybe even read the note which (Daria assumed) had been left for her.

_Hey amiga,_

_Congratulations! You are the only person who could have possibly gotten away with showing up here in the middle of the night, drunk and raving, and gotten away with it. Do yourself a favor and take some of those aspirin, since you’re probably half-dead. If I’m not here, it’s because some of us have an art installation to work on._

_-J_

_Ah_ , Daria thought, _so_ that’s _where I’ve ended up._ This thought was very rapidly replaced by _I think I’m going to vomit_ , which, after rushing to where she vaguely recalled the bathroom being, she did. 

“You’re doing great, Daria,” she said in an unsuccessful attempt to reassure herself. “Although apparently you’ve roped Jane into your mess. Fantastic.”

The mess in question wasn’t something Daria wanted to think about, centering as it did around what she was somewhat certain was a nervous breakdown. She’d walked out of her day job - not in the “oh time to go sense” but in the “hey fuck you and the horse you rode in on” sense - after being asked to adjust the language on the same advertising copy one too many times, and after a brief phone call in which she’d been informed that her exit was neither appreciated nor technically allowed under the agency’s code of conduct, meaning she could consider herself no longer employed. Her response of “Why do you think I got up and left, exactly?” had more or less settled the matter. 

She probably could have handled the decision better, she considered. It would have been smarter, for example, to find a new job first - or at least make sure she’d actually got a few freelance gigs or stories accepted. Maybe she could have even put more than a few months’ savings aside, built an actual buffer to ensure she didn’t end up homeless. These thoughts had all, in their inevitable way, led to her buying several bottles of strong alcohol on the walk back to her apartment from the train, and then - apparently - led to her showing up at Jane’s apartment. Oh, and somewhere in there she’d bought cigarettes. 

Daria’s first instinct was always to keep her problems to herself. Her parents, certainly, would not be hearing about this particular decision until she had figured a way out of it, and while she and Quinn were certainly less hostile with one another these days, she always tried to avoid situations where her sister was in a position to offer advice (or see behind the carefully constructed persona of professionalism and success that Daria presented to her family, really). Jane also tended to be kept out of the loop, though that was less a case of Daria not wanting to present herself as professional and successful (Jane being the only one who really ever saw Daria for who she was, which was a mess like everyone else) and more a case of her not wanting to bother Jane with her petty little quarter-life crisis. Or however far through her life she was, she didn’t want to be _too_ optimistic - if she couldn’t find another source of income, for example, her life expectancy would probably go way down. 

Standing up from her position in front of the toilet, Daria noticed another note had been taped to the bathroom mirror.

_There’s a set of clean clothes on my bed that should fit you. Don’t take this the wrong way, Morgendorfer, but you could probably use a shower._

_-J_

Something in Daria’s chest swelled and she felt the sudden urge to cry with gratitude. She wasn’t sure what it said about her and Jane’s friendship that Jane had a set of clothes ready for her at the drop of a hat, but it was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. Daria hopped in the shower and stood under the hot water until she felt human enough to actually consider the use of soap. By the time she exited the shower, her headache felt significantly less horrendous, and she at least didn’t smell of whisky and cigarettes. 

It became rapidly apparent that the clothes Jane had offered were not, in fact, a set of clothes Daria had left at some point, but were in fact just some of Jane’s clothes which (Daria assumed) were slightly too big for her and thus, were more Daria’s size. Jane had also thoughtfully left an unopened pack of boxers with a note that just said _You don’t need to give these back_. The jeans bunched up a little around her feet, but the shirt more or less fit fine. If she had to give an estimate, Daria would say she felt around 65% human, which was a significant improvement from when she woke up.

Now that she was both showered and dressed, Daria began considering her options. The best option was to leave, she thought, because staying not only placed the onus on Jane to continue to play hostess when she got back, but it _also_ meant having to hear from Jane the details of her drunken ranting (and answer the questions that such ranting doubtless raised). At the same time, part of her thought that maybe she could pay Jane back for her hospitality by buying her dinner or something - and there was the unspoken reason that as much as Daria didn’t want to talk to anyone about what had happened, she also _desperately_ wanted to talk to Jane about this, because as far as Daria was concerned, Jane was the only one who would or could understand her at all.

“I’ll get some breakfast first,” Daria said aloud, “and go from there. Baby steps, Morgendorfer.”

She pulled out her phone, and a short twenty minutes later a knock on the door signaled the arrival of a breakfast sandwich and a can of highly caffeinated something or other mixed with tea that claimed to be a hangover cure. Daria wasn’t entirely certain she believed that was possible, but she figured impulse-buying a weird drink was relatively tame compared to everything else she’d done in the last twenty-four hours. She sat on the futon, flipped on the television, and savored the taste of her breakfast sandwich with the reassuring white noise of a rerun of Sick Sad World.

“-me on, Morgendorfer, give me some kind of sign here.”

Daria felt herself being shaken slowly and blinked her eyes. Jane loomed over her with a vaguely concerned expression that was quickly replaced by her usual half-smirk. 

“There we go, amiga. I thought you were in a coma or something.”

“Alas,” Daria drawled, “it would appear that oblivion passed me by once again.”

“A true tragedy for both of us.” Jane replied. “I was planning to use you as a conversation piece.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get your chance eventually.”

“Well,” Jane said, plopping down next to Daria and giving her a nudge, “don’t go rushing into it just for little ol’ me.”

Which was as close as Jane would ever get to admitting that Daria’s behavior the night before had worried her, which Daria understood in the way that she always understood what Jane was actually saying. Once again Daria felt a surge of gratitude she couldn’t quite contain, so she returned Jane’s nudge with an almost imperceptible smile. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” she said, rolling her eyes, and then, before she could stop herself, “Thanks. For uh, putting up with me. And letting me sleep on your futon.”

A slight quirk of the eyebrow was the only sign that Daria’s comment had caught Jane off guard. “What are friends for if not providing a place to drunkenly rant and pass out?” There was a pause as Jane seemed to wrestle with some decision before saying, “I don’t suppose you wanna… tell me what precisely that was all about, do you?” She almost immediately seemed to regret it, hastening to add, “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to, just…”

Daria sighed. “No, I think an explanation is probably the least I can do for you, but uh… you wanna get some dinner? My treat.”

“Pizza.” Jane said decisively. “Pepperoni and bacon. _I_ had a long day welding stuff together, and _you_ could probably use a little grease to help shake off that hangover of yours. Plus, pizza’s the perfect food to have while discussing dark business.”

“Ah yes, nothing says ‘dark business’ like pizza.” Snorted Daria.

“It’s true!” Insisted Jane, “Everyone knows that Lee Harvey Oswald ate a pizza while talking to J Edgar Hoover about the plot to kill JFK. There was an article online about it.”

“Well, who am I to speak against the word of some random article on the internet? I’ll make the call.”

It didn’t take long for Daria to explain what had happened - they’d barely made a dent in the pizza before Daria finished the story of her last day as an employed person. Jane seemed delighted.

“ _Damn_ , Morgendorfer, I never knew you had it in you! Did you really tell your boss to go fuck himself?”

“More or less.” Daria said, shrugging. “I might have added something about him being the poster child for white male mediocrity while I was at it, but honestly I was kind of in a fugue state.”

“Then you realized what you’d done and decided the best course of action was to drink heavily.” Jane summed up the rest of Daria’s evening. She took a drink of water and gave a chuckle. “Gotta admit, that sounds like the sort of thing _I’d_ do, not you.”

“We’ve known each other for over ten years,” Daria replied, “I think it was inevitable that you'd rub off on me eventually.”

Jane hummed and gave Daria a thoughtful look. “I guess so.” There was a beat and Jane surprised Daria again by asking another direct question. “So what brought on this sudden desire to burn your nascent professional career to the ground, anyway?”

Daria was quiet for a while. When she spoke again, it was a quiet, “I don’t really know.” She laughed, caught off-guard by her own answer. 

“I was sitting at my desk, and I realized that I could see the rest of my life in front of me. A lifetime of writing ad copy for whatever client happens to cross my desk, never advancing because I don’t want to be in charge of a team, just day in, day out, until the economy collapses or I die. And I thought...” she laughed again, “I thought that if I did that, I would kill myself.”

“So what do you want to do instead?” Jane asked, eyebrow quirked upwards, “If office drone isn’t in the cards?”

“I don’t know.” Daria replied. “I just knew I didn’t want _that_.”

“Well,” Jane said, drawing out the word like she’d forgotten what she was going to say next and was stalling for time, “far be it from me to suggest this…”

Daria groaned and put her head down on the table.“I _know_ it was a bad idea. It was irresponsible, and stupid,” her shoulders tensed and her hands balled into fists, “and now I’m-”

Jane’s hand landed on Daria’s shoulder. “Hey now, Morgendorfer, don’t get me wrong here - maybe you could’ve planned it better, but… be honest with me here: if you took the time to plan it out, would you ever have really done it?”

The feeling of Jane’s hand on her shoulder put a stop to Daria’s runaway thoughts, and her body relaxed. She thought about Jane’s question. “No, probably not.”

“Sometimes,” Jane said, her hand still on Daria’s shoulder, “you just need to _go_ for it.”

“Maybe,” Daria said, sitting up and turning to face Jane, “but I think it helps to know what ‘it’ is.”

“Eh,” Jane shrugged, moving her hand to brush some of Daria’s hair out of her eyes in a comforting gesture, “you’ve got time to figure that out, right?”

Looking at the quirk of Jane’s grin, Daria suddenly realized she’d figured at least _one_ thing out that she wanted. “Well,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry, “I guess you have a point.” 

“I’m a font of wisdom, Morgendorfer,” Jane said, catching something in Daria’s expression and making the decision to lean in closer, “you could learn a lot from me.”

“Jane,” Daria said, softly, “you know this is-”

“Morgendorfer,” Jane said, her hand coming up to rest gently but insistently on the back of Daria’s neck, “what did I _just_ say about going for it?”

Jane had a good point, Daria decided.

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to some [Bomb the Music Industry!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY33sB3SRRw) (as one does), and this more or less took a vague sort of shape in my head, so I sat down and hammered this thing out over the course of a few days here and there. It's cheating a bit to skip past Daria's explanation to Jane, I know, but I feel like it would've been too repetitive. Hopefully you agree, whoever you are.
> 
> This is the part where I say I don't plan on doing a second part of this featuring the two discussing the fact that Daria still doesn't know what she's going to do (because that's not the part I was interested in exploring with this), but I reserve the right to come back at some undefined point and do precisely that, should the mood take me.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment if you want! I respond to basically all of them, because I am _polite_ and also _constantly seeking the validation of others_.


End file.
